Wow. I was genuinely surprised to hear about this. I was prepared to see some chibified CGI version of TLK, but seeing a style so similar to the traditional animation of the original movie was really refreshing. I was actually inspired
to draw Kion (and I haven't done TLK fan art for years).
But seriously..."Kion"? It sounds almost like the writers were stumped for a name and were staring at the The Lion King logo for several hours before one of them got the brilliant idea of replacing the "L" in "Lion" with the "K" from "King".
I'm predicting a whole lot of fan theories stemming from those black strips on Kion's ears ("ZOMG, he's Simba and Zira's secret son!!1!"), and sadly, perhaps even more "Simba's son gets brutally murdered" scenarios.
EDIT: And did anyone else think "Oh my gosh, it's cub Mufasa!!" when they saw that first screenshot?
EDIT 2: I just had a thought: When the concept art of Naanda was first noticed, everyone in the fandom was all "Yaay, new character, new character!" even though all we could see was a heavily shadowed view of her back and all knew about her was that she was Sarabi's sister. Yet, even though two early drafts of the script Naanda appears in were made public and revealed that she is Nala's mother over a year ago (and only related to Sarabi in one of the drafts), fans are still depicting Naanda and Sarafina as separate characters...even though technically, Sarafina is essentially Naanda with a different name.
Now this new character has emerged. We've gotten a fairly good look at his design and we know the basic part he is going to play in this new series, yet everyone is all "Yaay, it's Kopa, it's Kopa!", even though the only things we know that Kion has in common with Kopa are his relation to Simba and his overall "Simba cloniness" (seriously, though -- name one semi-canon male cub that
isn't a Simba-clone to some degree).
It seems kind of strange to me how so many artists like to give Simba multiple cubs based on the various early and current versions of his cubs' names (Fluffy, Chaka, Shani, Aisha, Kopa, Kiara), but the reaction everyone seems to be having to Kion is "It's Kopa -- just renamed and with a different design!"*
*However, if Kion likes to spend a lot of time listening to his elders telling him stories, that might give that statement a little more weight.